Potential used laptop purchase help

[Inchworm]

I have the possibility of buying a Compaq Presario model 1720US.

Basically, it was donated and we will rummage it off when we have our annual sale.

I left the dang power cord at "work" but was told it was running perfectly.

Can you tell what the minimum guts of it is just by the model number? Operating system mainly and how old or out of date it is. Oh yea, also if it would have the ability for wi-fi.

Any help is surly appreciated. I know it isn't much to go on, but I'm all giddy lol.

:hi:

[canetoad]

1. Couple of links

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,80044/article.html

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?dlc=en&lc=en&product=95308&cc=us&dest_page=product&docname=c00256184

[Inchworm]

2. Thanks

I wasnt certain the links I was pulling up were correct. I'll read these.

Thanks again.

:yourock:

[canetoad]

3. Another thought

I recently cleaned up a Compaq notebook for someone at work. She had all the discs - XP, Compaq restore discs and drivers. Thinking we would have a nice clean install, we put XP on, it all loaded up OK, but could not get wireless networking to work.

Even after loading the right drivers etc, wireless still would not work. Eventually I wiped the drive again and reinstalled from the Compaq restore discs. Bingo, wireless was OK. I guess the moral of the story is to make sure you have the right discs to reload it if you are thinking of re-formatting.

[Gore1FL]

4. How do you plan to use this?

The specs show it to be someplace between whale excrement and small boat anchor.

It is a P III with a 133 Mhz Front Side Bus (FSB).

Compare that to a slow older Pentium 4 with a 400 Mhz fSB.

The desktop I bought in 2003 has a faster FSB than this laptop is rated at.

Now, if you plan to use it to search the web, and can buy it for next to nothing (I wouldn't spend $100 on it), then It'd probably be OK.